Technology Lab —

Build 2014: A very different Microsoft takes aim at the future

With a new CEO and a new structure, old ideas have a new vigor.

Microsoft's Build conference last week was Satya Nadella's first developer conference as CEO. It showed a Microsoft very different from the one we've seen before. For the first time in many years, this is a Microsoft poised to take on the future.

The Microsoft of the last few years has been a secretive, defensive company. During the development of Windows 8, in particular, the engagement—with developers, with users, with the media—was limited. When engagement did occur, it was both consistently unidirectional—there was little attempt to actually solicit feedback from the community or iterate designs based on real-world experience—and limited in its outlook. There was a refusal to outline trajectories or give any clues as to how the company intended to develop its software.

Combined with a heady mix of political and technological infighting, the lack of communication meant that communities Redmond once worked well with were treated poorly.

Consider, for example, the many developers that learned and adopted Silverlight, Microsoft's .NET-based framework for development of rich client apps, both within the browser and on the desktop. At one time, Silverlight was an important tool, one that developers found useful and enjoyed using. But within Microsoft, it fell out of favor. HTML5 instead became the promoted technology for building similar kinds of application.

There was, however, never any meaningful communication to this effect. No clear statement of how Silverlight would be wound down or even when it would cease development. Developers who invested in the platform were simply left to wait and wonder.

The situation for developers using the WPF graphical framework was similar. There have been rumors that it has been cancelled and the team that worked on it disbanded, but there was never any positive confirmation from Microsoft and little or no light shed on the framework's future, if it even had one. Again, developers made the investment in WPF, and they were left in the lurch. The same is true for developers using the XNA game framework (which, unlike WPF, has been killed off) and arguably even .NET as a whole.

Even as the company remained silent on these issues, it nonetheless expected its developer community to unquestioningly learn new tools and APIs. Programmers were expected to write apps for Windows 8, with its shiny new WinRT API, and Windows Phone 8, with its strange mish-mash of new WinRT and old Silverlight. The software company never made a good case for why the devs should learn yet more stuff, and it didn't provide any assurances that these new things wouldn't also be quietly discarded.

What communication did exist was focused only on the immediate. The company would give the appearance of being open and communicative with, for example, lengthy blog posts explaining some new Windows 8 feature or other or justifying why certain decisions were made. But this was completely one-sided.

The community provided very reasonable feedback—pointing out, for example, that Windows 8 leaves new users in the lurch, doing nothing to guide them through its new interface mechanisms, or suggesting that the Windows RT versus Windows 8 dichotomy was poorly communicated and, for many, confusing. This feedback was met with, at best, indifference, and at worst, an almost arrogantly obstinate insistence that there was no problem, that everything was fine, and that it was almost churlish to suggest otherwise.

Last week was different

But that was then. The Microsoft on display at Build this last week is a Microsoft if not necessarily transformed then at least transforming. The plainest demonstration of this was the keynote on the first day. Now of course, this devoted plenty of time to the immediate. Windows 8.1 Update and Windows Phone 8.1 will both be released imminently—tomorrow, in the case of the desktop update—but while the Microsoft of two years ago would have stopped there, this one did not.

Instead, we saw nods to the future: A quick glimpse of a new Start menu that will provide some kind of fusion of the Start menu and the Start screen. A few minutes spent on a new, touch-first version of Office. A look at how "universal apps"—apps that run on Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1—could one day, in the unspecified but not too distant future, also run on the Xbox One.

At Build was a Microsoft willing to acknowledge that there is a future; that its development has a trajectory. Moreover, we saw a Microsoft that recognizes that it has to talk about that future. Microsoft was telling the assembled developers that if they get on board with its platform now, this is where it will take them.

This is not to say that the company was completely forthcoming about all its plans or that it gave a detailed roadmap of what we'll see and when. The company was badly burned during the (essentially abandoned) development of "Windows Longhorn" in the early 2000s. Grandiose promises were made, and sweeping visions presented, and all were promised for the next version.

Thanks to a combination of, among other things, unexpected difficulty of delivering those goals, and the enormous disruption caused by the (necessary) focus on security, these promises were substantially broken, and the vision never became real. To this day, there is a fear of overpromising and underdelivering, and finding exactly the right balance will take some time.

A tune we've actually heard before

Satya Nadella presenting last week at Build.

It's tempting to credit this new Microsoft to the new CEO, Satya Nadella. Tempting, but facile. The wheels were set in motion by former CEO Steve Ballmer. Certain proponents of the secretive approach within the senior management were removed, and the 2013 reorganization put a greater emphasis on internal collaboration.

So much of what we saw last week was work that started under Ballmer's tenure. The decision to open source parts of .NET and collaborate with Xamarin? Soma Somasegar, CVP of Developer Division, told ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley that the work started three years ago. Satya Nadella was involved in this decision, encouraging the company to do what was right for developers, but nonetheless it was a decision made by "old" Microsoft.

The pricing change that will see Windows and Windows Phone cost OEMs nothing on Internet of Things and sub-9 inch devices? Rumors of such a cut have been floating around for some months, suggesting that too has been in the works for some time.

Similarly, indeed, the week before Build Microsoft launched Office for iPad. That happened 50-something days into Satya Nadella's reign—but it's development that had to have been started during Ballmer's reign.

One thing that's striking about the new Microsoft that was on display was how similar it was to the old Microsoft. For example, the goal of "Windows Everywhere" clearly isn't dead. Slashing the prices of Windows licenses, talking about Windows in the context of the Internet of Things, including demos of a new Windows-in-cars system: these are moves designed to get Windows everywhere.

But it's being done with a twist: Microsoft of course would prefer Windows everywhere. But if you're not using Windows, that's OK too. Even if you don't use Windows, the company still wants you to use its services, like Bing and Office 365, and it still wants you to use its Azure cloud platform. Microsoft will provide the tooling you need (either directly, or in conjunction with third parties) to let that happen.

Likewise, we can see how the Ballmerian vision of "Devices and Services," and before that "Three Screens and a Cloud," is starting to take shape. The key is that the devices aren't necessarily Microsoft devices; the screens aren't all Microsoft screens. Does the company hope that they are? Of course, and the new unified apps, that will substantially run on Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox One (with suitable user interface tuning), Microsoft will be giving developers the tools to hit all three screens.

With universal apps, you'll be able to develop for three screens simultaneously.

But if some of the screens are running iOS or Android, that's going to be fine too. Just as long as it's Microsoft's services and Microsoft's cloud that the screens and devices are using.

How different Microsoft truly is won't be apparent just from one conference. Putting customers and developers first is easy enough to say—what company doesn't at least pay lip service to the claim that the "customer is always right"?—but it's much harder to have as a genuine company policy, one that guides decisions and shapes the direction of the entire organization. It will be years before we'll see if this is anything other than a superficial change.

The new Microsoft is a work in progress, but even as a work in progress, it feels like a stronger company than it has any time recently. The goals may be the same as they've long been, but they're making sense in a way they might not have before. For the first time in many years, Microsoft is both embracing the modern computing world and credibly explaining how it can be a part of it.